The Anatomy of Melancholy

This island, among others, and our near neighbours France and Germany, bear sufficient witness: Roman prudence in government brought them out of barbarism in a short time. Just read what Caesar reports of us, and Tacitus of the ancient Germans: they were once as uncivilised as the people of Virginia. Yet through the establishment of colonies and good laws, they passed from a condition of barbarous lawlessness to countries full of rich and populous cities, as they are now, and became flourishing kingdoms.

In the same way, Virginia and those wild Irish might have been civilised long ago, if the policy now beginning—of establishing colonies, and so on—had been adopted earlier. I have read a discourse printed in 1612, Discovering the True Causes Why Ireland Was Never Entirely Subdued, or Brought under Obedience to the Crown of England, until the Beginning of His Majesty’s Happy Reign. Yet if a discerning political thinker thoroughly examined the author’s reasons, I fear they would not meet with complete approval: allowing Ireland to lie waste for so long would instead bring dishonour upon our nation.

Indeed, to come nearer home, if travellers saw those wealthy United Provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and the rest, across the sea from us; their neat cities and populous towns, full of hardworking craftspeople; so much land reclaimed from the sea and maintained with such labour by ingenious devices, so wonderfully successful—as at Beemster in Holland, “so that you could find nothing equal or similar to it in the whole world,” says the geographer Bertius: the whole world cannot match it;

so many navigable canals made by human hands from place to place; and, on our side, so many thousands of acres of fenland lying flooded; our cities sparsely populated, and mean, poor, and ugly beside theirs; our trades decayed; our ever-flowing rivers obstructed and their useful role in transport wholly neglected; so many harbours without ships or towns, so many parks and forests kept for pleasure, barren heaths, and depopulated villages—I think such a traveller would certainly find something to criticise.

I cannot deny that our nation “has a good reputation abroad”: by the common consent of geographers, historians, and political writers, it is a most noble and flourishing kingdom, “like a single fortress.” What Quinctius says in Livy about the inhabitants of the Peloponnese applies well to us: we are “tortoises enclosed in their own shells,” like so many tortoises in our shells, safely defended by an angry sea that forms a wall on every side.

Our island has received many such honourable tributes. As a learned countryman of ours puts it very well: “Ever since the Normans first came into England, this country, in military matters and every other aspect of civil life, has stood alongside the most flourishing kingdoms of Europe and our Christian world.” It is a blessed and wealthy country, one of the Fortunate Isles.